The
Doctrine of Svabhava or Svabhavata
and the Questions of Anatman and Shunyata

by David Reigle

[Accents have been removed from the original edition because of
technical limitations.]

The doctrine of svabhava or svabhavata, as was discussed in the previous Book of Dzyan
Research Report, "Technical Terms in Stanza II," is a fundamental doctrine of
the "Book of Dzyan" as presented in The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky. To
establish its validity outside the small circle of believing Theosophists, it must be
traced in the Buddhist texts where it is said to be found. Until it can be traced in the
Buddhist texts, the affirmation of its former existence by a Nepalese Buddhist Vajracharya
carries no more weight to objective investigators than do statements about it by
Theosophical Mahatmas. To trace it in the Buddhist texts we must necessarily do so in
terms of the "dharmas," the word they use throughout for all the "elements
of existence." Here we will need to reconcile their universally-held doctrine that
all dharmas are anatman, or "without self," with the Theosophical teachings
which regularly use the term atman. Then we come to their teaching of shunyata, the
"emptiness" of all dharmas. Only at this point are we back to svabhava, for
shunyata is defined as the nihsvabhava, the "lack of svabhava," of all dharmas.

It will already be obvious that for our research we must first find out if there is
anything taught in Buddhism that is not a dharma, something beyond the "elements of
existence." The Buddhist authority Walpola Rahula, explaining dhamma, the Pali
equivalent of the Sanskrit dharma, tells us that there is not:

There is no term in Buddhist terminology wider than dhamma . It includes not only the
conditioned things and states, but also the non-conditioned, the Absolute, Nirvana. There
is nothing in the universe or outside, good or bad, conditioned or non-conditioned,
relative or absolute, which is not included in this term.

In an earlier Book of Dzyan Research Report, "Theosophy in Tibet: The Teachings of
the Jonangpa School," the Buddhist teaching of the dhatu, the "element,"
described as permanent, stable, quiescent, and eternal, was likened to the Theosophical
teaching of the "one element." What, then, is the relationship between the one
element, the dhatu, and the many elements of existence, the dharmas? A verse from the now
lost Mahayana-abhidharma-sutra, quoted in several extant Buddhist texts, tells us that it
is their basis or support (samashraya):

From beginningless time the element is the basis of all the dharmas. Because it exists,
all the destinies [of living beings] exist, and even the [possibility of the] attainment
of nirvana.

[All translations are by myself unless otherwise noted. This verse is here taken from
Asabaga's commentary after 1.152 of the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga, where it explains the
tathagata-garbha or Buddha-nature, the dhatu or element when obscured. Hence, dhatu's
Tibetan translation is here khams, element. When this verse occurs in Yogacara texts, as
at the beginning of Asabaga's Mahayana-samgraha, and in Sthiramati's commentary on verse
19 of Vasubandhu's Vijnapti-matrata-siddhi-trimshika, it explains the alaya-vijnana or
substratum consciousness. Hence, dhatu's Tibetan translation is there dbyins, or realm.
This verse is accepted not only by the Jonangpas and the Yogacarins, but also by the
Prasabagika Madhyamikas, the dominant school in Tibet. It is quoted approvingly by
Jam-yang-shay-ba in his somewhat polemical Tibetan monastic study manual, with the
comment: "The Prasabagikas accept these passages literally." See Jeffrey
Hopkins' partial translation of this study manual in Meditation on Emptiness, London:
Wisdom Publications, 1983, where this occurs on p. 623.]

This seems to also provide us with a firm basis for tracing the Theosophical svabhava
or svabhavata doctrine in Buddhist sources. If the element is thought of as svabhava, and
svabhava is indeed given as one of its meanings in Maitreya's Ratna-gotra-vibhaga, we
would have it. So what happened to this teaching?

[Ratna-gotra-vibhaga 1.29 gives ten meanings for the dhatu, the first of which is
svabhava.]

Early Buddhism was divided into many schools. Although they classified the dharmas
differently, and even had different numbers of dharmas, generally speaking they held that
each dharma was a real existent (dravya), had its own svabhava, and was impermanent
(anitya).

[See: Etienne Lamotte, History of Indian Buddhism from the Origins to the Shaka Era,
translated from the French by Sara Webb-Boin, Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste de
l'Universite Catholique de Louvain, 1988, p. 600.]

Thus the svabhava of a dharma is here its individual nature, which is non-eternal. An
exception to this was the Sarvastivada school. The teachings of this once-dominant school
have been preserved for us as taught by the Vaibhasikas of Kashmir in Vasubandhu's
Abhidharma-kosha . This text, however, says little about their svabhava teaching. But the
same author wrote a commentary on this text criticizing many of its teachings from the
standpoint of the Sautrantika school. Strangely enough, it is here in a verse ridiculing
this teaching that we find its clearest statement:

Svabhava always exists, but an existent entity is not held to be permanent; yet an
existent entity is not different from svabhava. Clearly, [and absurdly,] this is the doing
of [some imaginary] God.

[This verse is found in Vasubandhu's Abhidharma-kosha-bhasya on 5.27.]

No Buddhist school has ever believed in God. The Sautrantikas are saying that this
position is so illogical that it would have to be the work of an all-powerful God who
could transcend the laws of reason, and hence for Buddhists it is completely absurd. The
Sarvastivada position seems to be that the svabhava of a dharma is eternal, although an
independently existing entity (bhava) is not eternal. If this svabhava is taken to be the
one element, we would have an exact statement of the Theosophical position. There is the
one element, only the one element, and nothing but the one element; and it is eternal. All
apparently existing things are non-eternal as such. Yet, if there is nothing but the one
element, all apparently existing things cannot be different from it. But the Sarvastivada
position was not seen in this way. Rather it was seen like that of the other early
Buddhist schools to refer to the svabhava of the individual dharmas. For as stated in the
early Samaya-bhedoparacana-cakra by Vasumitra, who was himself a Sarvastivadin, "The
svabhava [of a dharma] does not combine with the svabhava [of another dharma]."

["Origin and Doctrines of Early Indian Buddhist Schools: A Translation of the
Hsuan-chwang Version of Vasumitra's Treatise," trans. Jiryo Masuda, Asia Major, vol.
2, 1925, p. 48 (section 3, chapter 5, verse 29). See also Abhidharma-kosha 1.18 for a
similar statement.]

Vasumitra's treatise is terse and admittedly not always easy to understand, but my
bracketed material in the above quote certainly reflects how later schools understood the
Sarvastivada position, namely that their eternal svabhava is that of the individual
dharmas.

Buddhist thought as studied in Tibet for the last millennium holds that the
Sarvastivadins or Vaibhasikas were refuted by the Sautrantikas; the Sautrantikas were
refuted by the Yogacarins or Cittamatrins; the Yogacarins were refuted by the Svatantrika
Madhyamikas; and these were refuted by the Prasabagika Madhyamikas. This latter is
accepted as the highest teaching on earth by the majority of Tibetan Buddhists. In this
manner the old Sarvastivada teaching of svabhava as eternal, taken to refer to the
individual dharmas, was superseded.

The teaching of the eternal element or dhatu as the basis of all the dharmas, allowing
the possibility of seeing in it a single eternal svabhava, was taken differently by
different schools. The Yogacarins understood the dhatu to refer to the alaya-vijnana, or
substratum consciousness. The Madhyamikas understood the dhatu to refer to the
tathagata-garbha, or Buddha-nature, taken to be the emptiness of the mind. Buddhist
schools sought to avoid emphasizing this teaching in any way which could be seen as
holding a unitary eternal svabhava, apparently because of the similarity of this idea to
the Hindu atman doctrine.

The Question of Anatman

All known schools of Buddhism have always taught that all dharmas are anatman or
"without self." This means that atman as the universal higher self taught in
Hinduism and also taught in Theosophy is denied. This distinctive teaching of Buddhism
defines for Buddhists their teachings as Buddhist. Thus most Buddhists regard Theosophy as
derived from Hinduism, not from Tibetan Mahatmas who as Buddhists could not hold the atman
doctrine. Conversely some Theosophists as well as others have attempted to show that
Buddhism does not really deny atman. Since this doctrine is so central to Buddhist
teachings, any Theosophist who wishes to trace a svabhava or svabhavata doctrine in the
Buddhist texts must first reconcile the anatman doctrine one way or the other with the
Theosophical teachings. To do this we should consider the words of Walpola Rahula:

What in general is suggested by Soul, Self, Ego, or to use the Sanskrit expression
Atman, is that in man there is a permanent, everlasting and absolute entity, which is the
unchanging substance behind the changing phenomenal world. ...

Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of such
a Soul, Self, or Atman . according to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is an
imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality. ...

"The negation of an imperishable Atman is the common characteristic of all
dogmatic systems of the Lesser as well as the Great Vehicle, and, there is, therefore, no
reason to assume that Buddhist tradition which is in complete agreement on this point has
deviated from the Buddha's original teaching."

It is therefore curious that recently there should have been a vain attempt by a few
scholars to smuggle the idea of self into the teaching of the Buddha, quite contrary to
the spirit of Buddhism. These scholars respect, admire, and venerate the Buddha and his
teaching. They look up to Buddhism. But they cannot imagine that the Buddha, whom they
consider the most clear and profound thinker, could have denied the existence of an Atman
or Self which they need so much. They unconsciously seek the support of the Buddha for
this need for eternal existence  of course not in a petty individual self with small
s, but in the big Self with a capital S.

It is better to say frankly that one believes in an Atman or Self. Or one may even say
that the Buddha was totally wrong in denying the existence of an Atman . But certainly it
will not do for any one to try to introduce into Buddhism an idea which the Buddha never
accepted, as far as we can see from the extant original texts.

[What the Buddha Taught, pp. 51-56.]

The term atman is used in Theosophy for the seventh or highest principle in man. In the
"Cosmological Notes" from January 1882 a Mahatma gives in parallel columns the
seven principles of man and of the universe in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and English.

The term atman is found in two forms in the Sanskrit column for the principles of man.
The Tibetan terms given for these, however, are not translations of the Sanskrit terms,
but rather represent a different system. In other words, the Tibetan system used here by
the Mahatmas does not have atman or its translation; only the Sanskrit system does, which
consists of terms drawn from Hinduism. It is well known to readers of The Mahatma Letters
to A. P. Sinnett that the Mahatmas expressed great difficulty in finding appropriate terms
with which to teach their doctrines, and they often drew from wherever they could find
similar ideas, including even the European philosophy of the time. Indeed, this practice
could satisfactorily explain their references to the Svabhavika school of Buddhism thought
to exist in Nepal, were it not for the fact that the term svabhavat is given seven times
in the Stanzas from the "Book of Dzyan." Since the Mahatmas had Hindu chelas,
they would have already had intact a system of Hindu terms. But it does not necessarily
follow that the Mahatmas were themselves followers of the schools from which the terms
were taken. E.g., "We are not Adwaitees [followers of the Hindu school of advaita or
non-dual Vedanta], but our teaching respecting the one life is identical with that of the
Adwaitee with regard to Parabrahm."

So also, from their use of parallel terms it does not necessarily follow that the
Mahatmas accept all the implications of the term thus used, as we learn from an article
published at that same time.

An article by the Adwaitee Hindu chela T. Subba Row, "The Aryan-Arhat Esoteric
Tenets on the Sevenfold Principle in Man," came out in The Theosophist, January 1882,
with notes by H. P. Blavatsky. These notes were written before the publication in 1883 of
A. P. Sinnett's highly influential Theosophical classic, Esoteric Buddhism, and therefore
before Blavatsky felt obliged to counter the view that Theosophy is esoteric Buddhism so
as to stress its universality (as she later did in The Secret Doctrine). Thus she here
speaks unguardedly of the differences between the esoteric Buddhist or Arhat doctrine of
the Tibetan Mahatmas and the esoteric Brahmanical or Aryan doctrine of the Hindu
Initiates. By the time this article was reprinted three years later in Five Years of
Theosophy, key sentences giving these differences were omitted; and in her subsequent
writings we read only of the identity of the Hindu Vedantic parabrahman and atman with the
Buddhist teachings and with Theosophy. Here are the relevant excerpts from her notes:

So that, the Aryan and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance,
differing but in names given and the way of putting it, a distinction resulting from the
fact that the Vedantin Brahmans believe in Parabrahman, a deific power, impersonal though
it may be, while the Buddhists entirely reject it. [p. 406]

The Impersonal Parabrahman thus being made to merge or separate itself into a personal
"jivatma," or the personal god of every human creature. This is, again, a
difference necessitated by the Brahmanical belief in a God whether personal or impersonal,
while the Buddhist Arahats, rejecting this idea entirely, recognize no deity apart from
man. [p. 410]

We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference between
Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was a kind of rationalistic
Vedantism, while the latter might be regarded as transcendental Buddhism. If the Aryan
esotericism applies the term jivatma to the seventh principle, the pure and per se
unconscious spirit  it is because the Vedanta postulating three kinds of existence
 (1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the vyavaharika (the
practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or illusory life)  makes the
first life or jiva, the only truly existent one. Brahma or the one self is its only
representative in the universe, as it is the universal life in toto while the other two
are but its "phenomenal appearances," imagined and created by ignorance, and
complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand,
deny either subjective or objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha
declares that there is neither Creator nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist ration-alism was
ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as
in the words of Flint  'wherever there is consciousness there is relation, and
wherever there is relation there is dualism.' The One Life is either "mukta"
(absolute and unconditioned) and can have no relation to anything nor to any one; or it is
"baddha" (bound and conditioned), and then it cannot be called the absolute ;
the limitation, moreover, necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account
for all the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but
of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated unconsciousness (so to translate),
of an element (the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of
everything else in the universe; ... [pp. 422-23]

[H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, ed. Boris de Zirkoff, vol. 3.]

The central doctrine of the upanisads, and therefore of Vedanta, is that there is
nothing but brahman, or parabrahman, and further that brahman and atman, the Self in all,
are one. Buddhism, for whatever reason, did not teach an a-brahman or "no
brahman" doctrine, but rather taught an an-atman or "no self" doctrine. At
the time of the Buddha there existed in India other Hindu schools, such as Sabakhya, who
interpreted the upanisads differently than the Vedantins. The Sabakhya school understood
brahman as referring to unconscious substance. This may be seen from the extensive
polemics against them by Shabakaracarya in his commentary on the Brahma-sutra, also called
the Vedanta-sutra, whose whole point is to prove that brahman is omniscient, and therefore
not unconscious. Since they are the primary target of Shabakaracarya's polemics, we may
assume that the Sabakhya school was once quite influential; and this is indeed borne out
by the old epic literature of India. So there was in early India an influential Hindu
school which held that brahman was unconscious substance (acetana pradhana or prakriti).
But despite the teaching that brahman and atman are one, the Sabakhya school understood
atman as referring to the conscious purusa or spirit, much like the Vedanta school's atman
as the conscious jivatman in man. Thus, if the Buddha's point was to refute an absolute
consciousness, he would have been obliged to refute atman rather than brahman. As such, I
would choose to reconcile the Theosophical teachings in favor of the anatman doctrine of
the Buddhist teachings, despite Theosophy's use of the term atman, which I would then take
as a working but not entirely overlapping parallel.

If, on the other hand, the Buddha's point with the anatman doctrine was not to refute
an absolute consciousness, but to refute an absolute substratum of any kind, the Buddhists
have some very embarrassing sutras of their own to reconcile. These are the
Tathagata-garbha or Buddha-nature sutras,

said by the Jonangpas to be of definitive meaning, and said by the Gelugpas to require
interpretation. For example, one of these, the Maha-parinirvana-sutra, teaches that:

The atman is the Tathagatagarbha. All beings possess a Buddha Nature: this is what the
atman is. This atman, from the start, is always covered by innumerable passions (klesha):
this is why beings are unable to see it.

It is noteworthy that this very sutra, extracts from which had been translated by
Samuel Beal as far back as 1871, was quoted in The Mahatma Letters on this very question
of atman:

Says Buddha, "you have to get rid entirely of all the subjects of impermanence
composing the body that your body should become permanent. The permanent never merges with
the impermanent although the two are one. But it is only when all outward appearances are
gone that there is left that one principle of life which exists independently of all
external phenomena...."

The teachings of the Tathagata-garbha sutras are synthesized in a unique and
fundamental text, the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga, which is considered in Tibetan tradition to be
one of the five texts of Maitreya. This text refers to the four qualities which Buddhism
had always taught as characterizing all dharmas or phenomena, namely, impermanence
(anitya), suffering (duhkha), no-self (anatman), and impurity (ashubha); but says that
their opposites characterize the dharma-kaya or absolute, namely, permanence (nitya),
happiness (sukha), self (atman), and purity (shubha). The commentary then quotes in
explanation of this a passage from the Shri-mala-sutra, which I here translate in full:

O Lord, people hold mistaken views about the five perishable personality aggregates
which form the basis of clinging to existence. They have the idea of permanence about that
which is impermanent, the idea of happiness about that which is suffering, the idea of
self (atman) about that which is without self (anatman), and the idea of purity about that
which is impure. Even all the Shravakas and Pratyeka-Buddhas, O Lord, because of their
knowledge of emptiness (shunyata), hold mistaken views about the dharma-kaya of the
Tathagata (Buddha), the sphere of omniscient wisdom, never before seen. The people, O
Lord, who will be the Buddha's true sons, having the idea of permanence, having the idea
of self (atman), having the idea of happiness, and having the idea of purity, those
people, O Lord, will hold unmistaken views. They, O Lord, will see correctly. Why is that?
The dharma-kaya of the Tathagata, O Lord, is the perfection of permanence, the perfection
of happiness, the perfection of self (atman), and the perfection of purity. The people, O
Lord, who see the dharma-kaya of the Tathagata in this way, see correctly. Those who see
correctly are the Buddha's true sons.

[Ratna-gotra-vibhaga-vyakhya after 1.36; E. H. Johnston ed. p. 30-31; Z. Nakamura ed.
p. 59. A perfectly good translation of this exists by J. Takasaki from Sanskrit, pp.
209-210, and also by E. Obermiller from Tibetan, p. 166. I have retranslated it in order
to bring out the technical terms, particularly atman, which Takasaki and Obermiller
translate as "unity" rather than "self."]

Terms such as Tathagata-garbha and dharma-kaya have multiple connotations, so I have
left them untranslated above. As mentioned in an earlier Book of Dzyan Research Report,
the Tathagata-garbha, or Buddha-nature, and thei dharma-kaya, or body of the law, are what
the dhatu, or element, is called when obscured and when unobscured, respectively; and
these three terms correspond well with the "One Life," the "One Law,"
and the "One Element," of The Mahatma Letters . These three terms for the
absolute are interpreted by the Gelugpas as referring to the absolute truth of the
emptiness of all things, and not to any absolute substratum. But for the Jonangpas they
come from texts of definitive meaning which require no interpretation, so do refer to an
absolute substratum which is empty of everything but itself. The Tathagata-garbha texts,
like all Buddhist texts, still deny atman in regard to phenomenal life, but accept atman
in regard to ultimate reality; that is, as applied to the Tathagata-garbha and the
dharma-kaya, or the obscured and unobscured dhatu, the element, which is described as
eternal, but not as conscious. This certainly justifies the Mahatma's use of the term,
even from a Buddhist standpoint.

The Question of Shunyata

Having reconciled the Buddhist anatman doctrine with Theosophical teachings, at least
to my own satisfaction, we can now proceed to the shunyata, or "emptiness"
question, which is closely linked with the svabhava question. The doctrine of anatman is
taught throughout Buddhism from beginning to now, and in all its branches. The doctrine of
shunyata, however, comes from sutras said to have disappeared from the realm of humans
forty years after the time of the Buddha, and only brought back centuries later. These
texts form the basis of Mahayana or northern Buddhism, but were not accepted by Hinayana
or southern Buddhism. Primary among these are the Prajna-paramita or Perfection of Wisdom
sutras, which were brought back by Nagarjuna from the realm of the Nagas, the
"serpents" of wisdom, called by Blavatsky, "initiates."

Hinayana Buddhism in general teaches that all dharmas, though they are impermanent or
momentary, really exist, so each has its own svabhava. The Prajna-paramita texts teach
that all dharmas do not really exist, that they are empty of any svabhava of their own;
thus adding to the early anatman doctrine regarding persons (pudgala-nairatmya) an anatman
doctrine regarding dharmas (dharma-nairatmya).

The doctrine of shunyata, the central teaching of the Prajna-paramita texts, is stated
in terms of the shunyata, the "emptiness" or "voidness" of all
dharmas; or more fully, that all dharmas are svabhava-shunya, "empty" (shunya)
of svabhava. These texts never tire of repeating this teaching:

[These representative examples are drawn from the 25,000 and 18,000 line
Prajna-paramita sutras. There is at present no complete Sanskrit edition of any of the
three large Prajna-paramita sutras. But as pointed out by Edward Conze, their contents are
essentially identical, with the 100,000 line version spelling out in full the extensive
and repetitive lists of categories which are only abbreviated in the 18,000 and 25,000
line versions. So each of the three can be divided according to subject matter into eight
progressively achieved "realizations" (abhisamaya), following Maitreya's
Abhisamayalabakara. Using this, we can readily see what the available Sanskrit editions
cover:

The 25,000 line editions of Dutt and Kimura, covering the first through fourth
abhisamayas, and the 18,000 line editions of Conze, covering the fifth through eighth
abhisamayas, make up the complete subject matter of these texts. Thus it was not until
1990, with Kimura's edition completing the last of the eight abhisamayas to be edited,
that we had access to a complete large Prajna-paramita sutra in printed form.]

No dharma has ever come into existence (anutpada); they do not exist (na samvidyate);
they are non-existent (abhava); they are empty (shunya); they are empty of svabhava
(svabhava-shunya); they are without svabhava (nihsvabhava); their svabhava is non-existent
(abhava-svabhava). Again, I have left svabhava untranslated. One may employ any number of
possible translations: essence, own-being, inherent existence, self-existence,
self-nature, essential nature, intrinsic nature, intrinsic reality. As may now be seen,
most occurrences of the term svabhava in these texts are found in conjunction with
occurrences of the term shunyata, because the whole point of the doctrine of shunyata is
to refute the doctrine of svabhava.

The shunyata or emptiness teachings of the Prajna-paramita sutras were first formulated
into a philosophy by Nagarjuna. This is the Madhyamaka or "middle way"
philosophy, so called because it seeks to avoid the two extremes of eternalism and
nihilism. Its primary text is the Mula-madhyamaka-karika, or "Root Verses on the
Middle Way." In this text Nagarjuna underscores how critical it is to understand
shunyata correctly:

An incorrect view of emptiness destroys the slow-minded, like an incorrectly grasped
snake, or an incorrectly cast spell.

Yet early on, varying schools of interpretation of Nagarjuna's treatise arose. Its
verses or karikas are concise and often hard to understand without a commentary. Nagarjuna
is thought to have written his own commentary on it, called the Akutobhaya, but his
authorship of the extant text of that name found in the Tibetan canon is rejected by
Tibetan tradition.

[Meditation on Emptiness, Jeffrey Hopkins, p. 360]

By the time of Tsong-kha-pa, more than a millennium after the original text was
written, there existed many commentaries. After studying these, Tsong-kha-pa wondered what
the correct interpretation was. Through mystical means, the Buddha of Wisdom Manjushri
told him that the interpretation by Chandrakirti was in all ways reliable.

In this way Tsong-kha-pa and the Gelugpas came to champion Chandrakirti's school, the
Prasabagika Madhyamaka, which became dominant in Tibet.

The Prasabagika or "consequence" school uses a type of statement called
prasabaga, somewhat reminiscent of Socratic dialogue, which points out unexpected and
often unwelcome consequences in whatever anyone can postulate. It reduces these
postulations to absurdity. Through this type of reasoning dharmas are analyzed and shown
not to be findable, and as a consequence are proven to be empty. This school seeks to
avoid making positive statements of its own. Not only are all dharmas empty, so too is
emptiness empty. Shunyata itself does not exist any more than anything else. It is not the
void in which things may exist. Shunyata is here absolute only in the sense of being the
absolute truth of the emptiness of all things, including itself.

Would this, then, also be the Theosophical understanding of shunyata? The Theosophical
teachings are said to represent an esoteric school of interpretation, so one should not
expect them to agree with the exoterically known schools, such as "the Prasabaga
Madhyamika teaching, whose dogmas have been known ever since it broke away from the purely
esoteric schools."

[The Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 43.]

For as Blavatsky points out:

Esoteric Schools would cease to be worthy of their name were their literature and
doctrines to become the property of even their profane co-religionists  still less
of the Western public. This is simple common sense and logic. Nevertheless this is a fact
which our Orientalists have ever refused to recognize.

[H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 433.]

So now that Blavatsky did bring out to the western public some of the esoteric
teachings, under instruction from certain of the Tibetan Mahatmas who believed that the
time had come for this, where do we find the Theosophical understanding of shunyata?
Returning to the passage quoted earlier from Blavatsky's notes on Subba Row's article, we
continue reading:

Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one absolute,
indestructible, eternal, and uncreated unconsciousness (so to translate), of an element
(the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else
in the universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was, is,
and will be, whether there is a God, gods or none; whether there is a universe or no
universe; existing during the eternal cycles of Maha Yugas, during the Pralayas as during
the periods of Manvantara: and this is Space, the field for the operation of the eternal
Forces and natural Law, the basis (as our correspondent rightly calls it) upon which take
place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasha-Prakriti, guided by the unconscious regular
pulsations of Shakti  the breath or power of a conscious deity, the theists would
say  the eternal energy of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space,
then, or Fan, Bar-nang (Maha-Shunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the
"Emptiness" is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute.

[H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 3, p. 423.]

The term "space" is Samuel Beal's rendering of shunyata in his 1871
translation of the most condensed Prajna-paramita sutra, the Heart Sutra.

[Found in A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, by Samuel Beal, London:
f304 Trubner and Co., 1871, pp. 282-284. It had been published earlier in Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, n.s. vol. 1, 1865, pp. 25-28.]

Blavatsky had quoted it earlier in another note to Subba Row's article:

Prakriti, Svabhavat or Akasha is  Space as the Tibetans have it; Space filled
with whatsoever substance or no substance at all; i.e., with substance so imponderable as
to be only metaphysically conceivable. ... 'That which we call form (rupa) is not
different from that which we call space (Shunyata) ... Space is not different from Form.
...' (Book of Sin-king or the Heart Sutra ... .)

[H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 3, pp. 405-406.]

Beal was one of the first western translators of Buddhist texts. Influenced by Brian
Hodgson's account of the four schools of Buddhism, Beal believed that Chinese Buddhism
followed the Svabhavika school, accepting a "universally diffused essence."

[Beal, Catena, p. 11: "Both these writers adopted the teaching of the Swabhavika
school of Buddhism, which is that generally accepted in China. This school holds the
eternity of Matter as a crude mass, infinitesimally attenuated under one form, and
expanded in another form into the countless beautiful varieties of Nature." Also, p.
14: "The doctrine of a universally diffused and self-existing essence of which matter
is only a form, seems to be unknown in the Southern schools. It would appear, therefore,
that there has been no advance in the Southern philosophical code since the date of
Nagasena [i.e., Nagarjuna], who was a strenuous opponent of the Swabhava theory."]

So in Beal's understanding, shunyata or space was just another form of the absolute
svabhava. Several decades later the first comprehensive study in English of the Madhyamaka
school based on a thorough study of Nagarjuna's original Sanskrit text came out: T. R. V.
Murti's The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, 1955. Although no longer based on a Svabhavika
idea, Murti still understood shunyata to be the Buddhist absolute. Therefore Madhyamaka
was seen by him as a kind of absolutist philosophy. In recent decades, however, since the
Tibetan displacement, a number of new works have come out based on collaboration with
Tibetan Gelugpa lamas, which severely criticize the earlier absolutist interpretations of
Madhyamaka.

[See, for example: Tsong Khapa's Speech of Gold in the Essence of True Eloquence:
Reason and Enlightenment in the Central Philosophy of Tibet, by Robert A. F. Thurman,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984; The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction
to Early Indian Madhyamika, by C. W. Huntington, Jr., with Geshe Namgyal Wangchen,
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989; The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way:
Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika, by Jay L. Garfield, New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.]

They point out that Madhyamaka is by definition the middle way which avoids the
extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Neither of these two forms of absolutism can be the
correct interpretation. The Tibetans are heirs to an unbroken tradition of Madhyamaka
spanning more than fifteen hundred years. Since this tradition has been thoroughly sifted
by generations of scholars, they have every reason to believe that theirs is the correct
interpretation of shunyata; and this shunyata is not something which itself exists in any
absolute way such as space. Do we here have another case where Blavatsky quoted whatever
she could find which seemed to support the esoteric teachings, but which later turns out
not to support them after all? I don't think so.

In one of the most significant extracts drawn from secret commentaries and found in The
Secret Doctrine, we find:

... As its substance is of a different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants
of the latter, seeing through it, believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty
space. There is not one finger's breadth (angula) of void Space in the whole Boundless
(Universe)....

[The Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 289.]

This leaves no doubt that shunyata or space is indeed understood in the Arhat secret
doctrine as the absolute, the one element, the eternal substance. But how can there be an
absolute in the middle way taught by the Buddha?

Tracing Absolute Shunyata and Absolute Svabhava

There is a tradition known as "Great Madhyamaka," which was introduced in
Tibet by Dolpopa and the Jonangpas several centuries ago. It fully agrees with the
Prasabagika Madhyamaka school that absolutist philosophies of eternalism and nihilism are
extremes to be avoided. Like all Madhyamaka traditions, it accepts as authoritative the
words of Nagarjuna:

Emptiness (shunyata) is proclaimed by the Buddhas as the leaving behind of all
philosophical views, but they have pronounced those who hold a philosophical view about
emptiness (shunyata) to be incurable.

Any conception, however subtle, that dharmas either absolutely exist or absolutely do
not exist, is considered incorrect; but the Great Madhyamikas hold that there is something
beyond what can be postulated by the mind. This inconceivable something, whatever it may
be called, is described in the Tathagata-garbha sutras as absolute and eternal. If it did
not exist, Buddhahood and all its qualities could not exist. Since it is beyond the range
and reach of thought, it transcends any philosophical view. Just as the Prasabagikas in
denying the absolute existence of anything, including shunyata, are careful to point out
that this does not imply nihilism, so the Great Madhyamikas in affirming the absolute
existence of Buddha qualities, as well as shunyata, are careful to point out that this
does not imply eternalism.

There are many precedents for the teaching of absolute shunyata in the words of the
Buddha. If there were not, no one would have taken it seriously, any more than any one
would take seriously Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine without such precedents. Primary
among these sources is a sutra called the "Disclosure of the Knot or Secret
Doctrine" (Sandhi-nirmocana), in which the Buddha says he has given three
promulgations of the teachings, or turnings of the wheel of the dharma, and will now
disclose the true intention or meaning of these apparently contradictory teachings. As
summarized from this sutra by Takasaki:

The ultimate doctrine of the Mahayana is no doubt taught in the Prajnaparamita, but its
way of exposition is 'with an esoteric meaning,' or 'with a hidden intention.' For example
the Prajnaparamita teaches the nihsvabhavata [lack of svabhava] in regard to the
sarvadharma [all dharmas], but what is meant by this nihsvabhavata is not so clear. The
purpose of the Sandhinirmocana is to explain this meaning of nihsvabhava 'in a clear
manner,' that is to say, to analyze and clarify the significance of the shunya-vada
[doctrine of shunyata]. Just because of this standpoint, the Sutra is called '
sandhi-nirmocana,' i.e. the Disclosure of the Knot or Secret Doctrine.

In the first promulgation the Buddha taught that all dharmas really exist. Though they
are impermanent, they all have their own svabhava. This is the teaching of the sutras
accepted by southern or Hinayana Buddhism. In the second promulgation the Buddha taught
that all dharmas are in reality non-existent. They are empty (shunya) of svabhava. This is
the teaching of the sutras accepted by northern or Mahayana Buddhism, especially of the
Prajna-paramita sutras. In the third promulgation the Buddha clarified in what way dharmas
exist and in what way dharmas do not exist. To do this he put forth the teaching of the
three svabhavas or natures.

[Sandhi-nirmocana-sutra, chapters 6 and 7. For English translation see: Wisdom of
Buddha: The Samdhinirmocana Sutra, translated by John Powers, Berkeley: Dharma Publishing,
1995.]

The nature of dharmas as they are conceptualized to have their own svabhava is their
imagined or illusory nature (parikalpita-svabhava); in this way they do not really exist.
The nature of dharmas as they arise in dependence on causes and conditions is their
dependent nature (paratantra-svabhava); in this way they exist conventionally. The nature
of dharmas as they are established in reality is their perfect nature
(parinispanna-svabhava); in this way they truly exist.

This teaching of the three svabhavas was elucidated in the treatises of Maitreya,
Asabaga, and Vasubandhu. Although these writers are often classified as being Citta-matra,
or "mind-only," and hence denigrated by Prasabagika Madhyamikas, Dolpopa
considers them to be "Great Madhyamikas." As such, they would be vitally
interested in the understanding of shunyata. Indeed, it is clear from their writings that
they were; and as we saw earlier, the terms shunyata and svabhava are normally found
together in Buddhist texts. Vasubandhu quotes in his commentary at the beginning of
Maitreya's Madhyanta-vibhaga a classic definition of shunyata, as something that exists,
and not just the emptiness of everything including itself:

Thus, 'where something does not exist, that [place] is empty (shunya) of that [thing];'
[seeing] in this way, one sees in reality. Again, 'what remains here, that, being here,
exists;' [knowing] in this way, one knows in reality. In this way, the unmistaken
definition of shunyata arises.

Later in the same chapter Maitreya and Vasubandhu discuss the sixteen kinds of
shunyata. The last two of these are called abhava-shunyata, the emptiness which is
non-existence (abhava), and abhava-svabhava-shunyata, the emptiness which is the svabhava
or ultimate essence of that non-existence. Vasubandhu explains that this kind of shunyata
truly exists:

[The former is] the emptiness of persons and dharmas. [The latter is] the true
existence (sad-bhava) of that non-existence.

[Madhyanta-vibhaga-bhasya, 1.20 in Nagao ed.; or 1.21 in Pandeya ed.:

pudgala-dharmabhavash ca shunyata | tad-abhavasya ca sad-bhavah.]

The source of this teaching in the words of the Buddha may be found in the
Tathagata-garbha sutras of his third promulgation. One of these, the
Maha-parinirvana-sutra, puts it this way, as translated from Tibetan by S. K. Hookham:

Thus, these are respectively, the emptiness that is the non-existence (abhava-sunyata)
of the accidentally stained form etc., which is their each being empty of their own
essence [ svabhava ], and the Tathagatagarbha Form etc., which are the Emptiness which is
the essence of [that] non-existence (abhava-svabhava-shunyata), the Absolute Other
Emptiness.

[The Buddha Within: Tathagatagarbha Doctrine According to the Shentong Interpretation
of the Ratnagotravibhaga, by S. K. Hookham, Albany: State University of New York Press,
1991, p. 139.]

Note the use of the phrase "Absolute Other Emptiness" (don dam gzan ston) in
this quotation to describe the sixteenth kind of shunyata, abhava-svabhava-shunyata . This
is one of many quotations utilized by Dolpopa to establish the teaching of an absolute
(paramartha) shunyata. This shunyata is empty of everything other than itself, hence it is
"empty of other" (gzan ston), but it is not empty of itself. In
contradistinction to this, the shunyata taught by the Prasabagika Madhyamaka school is
empty of everything, including itself. Theirs is a svabhava-shunyata, or an emptiness of
any ultimate svabhava in anything. The Great Madhyamikas, too, accept the teaching that
all dharmas, or the manifest universe as we know it, are empty of any svabhava of their
own, so are ultimately non-existent. But beyond the range and reach of thought there is a
truly existent absolute shunyata empty of anything other than itself, which is the truly
existent absolute svabhava of the non-existent manifest universe.

This mind-boggling teaching of the Great Madhyamikas was quite shocking to the
orthodoxy when brought out in Tibet by Dolpopa and the Jonangpas in the fourteenth
century. The later Jonangpa writer Taranatha tells us that at first some found this
"empty of other" doctrine hard to understand, while others were delighted by it.
But later when adherents of other schools heard it they experienced "heart
seizure" (snin gas) and "scrambled brains" (klad pa 'gems pa).

["Dol-po-pa Shes-rab Rgyal-mtshan and the Genesis of the Gzhan-stong Position in
Tibet," by Cyrus Stearns, Asiatische Studien, vol. 49, 1995, p. 836.]

This led finally to the banning of Dolpopa's works by the Gelugpas in the seventeenth
century. As one appreciative recent writer comments:

Dol po pa's work ... has the glorious distinction of being one of the very few works in
Tibet ever banned as heretical.

Dolpopa was in many ways to fourteenth-century Tibet what Blavatsky was to the
nineteenth-century world. The London writer W. T. Stead spoke in a similar vein about
Blavatsky's work just after her death:

... it [the creed which Madame Blavatsky preached] has at least the advantage of being
heretical. The truth always begins as heresy, in every heresy there may be the germ of a
new revelation.

While the Gelugpas and the Sakyapas, two of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism,
found the Great Madhyamaka teachings to be heretical, the Nyingmapas and the Kagyupas, the
other two schools, in general accepted these teachings. In fact, leading teachers from
these two schools used the Great Madhyamaka teachings as a unifying doctrinal basis for
their "non-sectarian" (ris med) movement. This was begun in Tibet in the latter
part of the 1800s, the same time the Theosophical movement was being launched in the rest
of the world.

Just as Blavatsky devoted the bulk of The Secret Doctrine to supportive quotations and
parallels from the world's religions and philosophies, so Dolpopa devoted the bulk of his
writings to supportive quotations from the Buddhist scriptures. Today many scholars are
finding that Dolpopa's understanding of his sources makes better sense than that of his
critics. One reason for this is that he takes them to mean what they say, rather than to
require interpretation. It took the genius of Tsong-kha-pa to bring about the
"Copernican revolution" of making the second promulgation or turning of the
wheel of the dharma to be of final or definitive meaning and the third promulgation to be
of provisional or interpretable meaning, and thereby reverse the teaching of the
Sandhi-nirmocana-sutra . Buddhist scholar Paul Williams writes:

In portraying the tathagatagarbha theory found in the sutras and Ratnagotravibhaga I
have assumed that these texts mean what they say. In terms of the categories of Buddhist
hermeneutics I have spoken as though the Tathagatagarbha sutras were to be taken literally
or as definitive works, and their meaning is quite explicit. The tathagatagarbha teaching,
however, appears to be rather different from that of Prasabagika Madhyamaka, and were I a
Tibetan scholar who took the Prasabagika Madhyamaka emptiness doctrine as the highest
teaching of the Buddha I would have to interpret the tathagatagarbha teaching in order to
dissolve any apparent disagreement.

Dolpopa is most known for the Shentong or "empty of other" teaching of an
absolute shunyata, said by him to be based on the three Kalacakra commentaries from
Shambhala,

[These three commentaries are: Pundarika's Vimala-prabha-tika on the Kalacakra-tantra;
Vajrapani's Laghu-tantra-tika on the Cakra-samvara-tantra; and Vajragarbha's
Hevajra-pindartha-tika on the Hevajra-tantra . The latter two explain their respective
tantras from the standpoint of Kalacakra.]

and supported by him with quotations from the Tathagata-garbha or Buddha-nature sutras
whose teachings are synthesized in Maitreya's Ratna-gotra-vibhaga and its commentary.
Despite this, the majority of Dolpopa's writings are on the Prajna-paramita texts. Thus
he, like Tsong-kha-pa, put most of his attention on the primary texts of the second
promulgation. In doing so he drew heavily on a lengthy commentary which gives, according
to him, the Great Madhyamaka interpretation of these texts. It is a combined commentary on
the 100,000 line, 25,000 line, and 18,000 line Perfection of Wisdom sutras, called the
Shata-sahasrika-pancavimshati-sahasrikastadasha-sahasrika- prajna-paramita-brihat-tika,
attributed by some to Vasubandhu. Unfortunately, it has not yet been translated into a
western language. The late Edward Conze, who was practically the sole translator of
Prajna-paramita texts throughout his lifetime, lamented that:

The most outstanding feature of contemporary Prajnaparamita studies is the
disproportion between the few persons willing to work in this field and the colossal
number of documents extant in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan.

Dolpopa believed that shunyata is found in two different senses in the Prajna-paramita
texts, that must be distinguished through context and through knowledge of absolute
shunyata, as may be found in the above-mentioned commentary. This text utilizes a three
svabhava type scheme in its explanations, as we have seen from the Sandhi-nirmocana-sutra
. Dolpopa refers frequently to the "Questions Asked by Maitreya" chapter of the
18,000 and 25,000 line Prajna-paramita sutras for the source of the three svabhava
teaching in the Prajna-paramita texts.

It is there given in related terms; e.g., dharmata-rupa, translated by Conze as
"dharmic nature of form," is there given for parinispanna-svabhava, the
"nature which is established in reality." Dolpopa considers this chapter to be
the Buddha's auto-commentary, which should be used to interpret the Prajna-paramita
sutras. This chapter, like elsewhere in these sutras, also speaks of the inexpressible
dhatu, saying that it is neither other than nor not other than the dharmas. While the
teaching that all dharmas are empty of any svabhava of their own is repeated tirelessly in
the Prajna-paramita sutras, Dolpopa also finds in them the Great Madhyamaka doctrine of
the truly existent absolute shunyata empty of everything other than itself, but not empty
of its own svabhava, which is established in reality (parinispanna).

All Madhyamaka traditions seek to avoid the two extremes of eternalism and nihilism,
which are the two cardinal doctrinal errors: superimposition (samaropa) of real existence
onto that which has no real existence; and refutation (apavada) of real existence in
regard to that which has real existence. According to Great Madhyamaka, the
Prajna-paramita sutras and the texts on philosophical reasoning by Nagarjuna address the
error of superimposition of real existence onto that which has no real existence. They do
this by teaching that all dharmas are empty of any svabhava. This is the Prasabagika
teaching. But one must also address the error of refutation of real existence in regard to
that which has real existence. This, say the Great Madhyamikas, is done primarily in the
Tathagata-garbha sutras of the third promulgation and their synthesis in the
Ratna-gotra-vibhaga of Maitreya, and also in the hymns of Nagarjuna. They do this by
teaching the real though inconceivable existence of the dhatu or element, both when
obscured as the Tathagata-garbha, and when unobscured as the dharma-kaya. They teach that
the dhatu is not empty of svabhava, that its svabhava is threefold, consisting of:

[Ratna-gotra-vibhaga 1.144.]

the dharma-kaya, "body of the law;" tathata, "suchness" or
"true nature;" and gotra, "germ" or "lineage." This is its
truly existent absolute svabhava established in reality.

Shunyata, as we saw above, is without doubt understood in the Arhat secret doctrine to
be an inconceivable absolute like Shentong, the emptiness of everything but itself. So
svabhava is without doubt understood in the Arhat secret doctrine to be a truly existent
absolute, as seen in a phrase consisting of the few "technical terms as employed in
one of the Tibetan and Senzar versions" of the Book of Dzyan given in The Secret
Doctrine:

Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj.

[The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 23.]

This means: "space (bar-snang) and earth (sa) in svabhava or svabhavata
(ngo-bo-nyid)." The Tibetan word ngo-bo-nyid or no-bo-nid is one of two standard
translations of the Sanskrit svabhava or svabhavata. Robert Thurman notes that:

Where it is used in the ontological sense, meaning "own-being" or
"intrinsic reality," the Tibetans prefer ngo bo nyid . Where it is used in the
conventional sense, meaning simply "nature," they prefer rang bzhin, although
when it is used as "self-nature," that is, stressing the sva- (rang) prefix,
they equate it with ngo bo nyid .

This phrase occurs in stanza I describing the state of the cosmos in pralaya before its
periodical manifestation. If space and earth are dissolved in svabhava, it must be the
svabhava of something that truly exists, even when the universe doesn't.

Conclusion

The concept of svabhava or svabhavata found throughout known Sanskrit writings is the
concept of the "inherent nature" of something. This something may be a common
everyday thing or it may be the absolute essence of the universe. In terms of doctrines,
then, there must first be the doctrine of an existing essence before there can be the
doctrine of its inherent nature or svabhava. If a doctrinal system does not posit the
existence of an essence, whether of individual things or of the universe as a whole, there
can be no doctrine of svabhava. Rather there would be the doctrine of nihsvabhava: that
since nothing has an essence, nothing has an inherent nature; such as is taught in
Prasabagika Madhyamaka Buddhism.

The concept of svabhava or svabhavata found in the Book of Dzyan comes from the stanzas
dealing with cosmogony, not from stanzas laying out its doctrinal system, which we lack.
But from the writings of Blavatsky and her Mahatma teachers it is clear that the doctrinal
system of the Book of Dzyan and The Secret Doctrine is based on the existence of the one
element. This, then, is a unitary essence, with a unitary inherent nature or svabhava, not
a plurality of essences with a plurality of svabhavas such as is taught in early
Abhidharma Buddhism.

From what we have seen above, there can be little doubt that the svabhava spoken of in
the Book of Dzyan is the svabhava of the dhatu, the one element. This teaching in Buddhism
is focused in a single unique treatise, the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga . The doctrinal standpoint
of the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga as understood in the Great Madhyamaka tradition is of all known
texts far and away the closest to that of The Secret Doctrine, just as the ethical
standpoint of the Bodhicaryavatara is of all known texts far and away the closest to that
of The Voice of the Silence . These facts take us well beyond the realm of probability.
Blavatsky indeed had esoteric northern Buddhist sources.

We are here speaking of the doctrinal system, not of the cosmogonic system, which the
Ratna-gotra-vibhaga does not deal with. The doctrinal standpoint of the
Ratna-gotra-vibhaga has been taken by most Buddhists down through the ages, other than the
Great Madhyamikas, to be quite different from the other four treatises of Maitreya. One of
the reasons for this is that it uses a largely different set of technical terms. Its
primary concern is the dhatu, the element, while that of its commentary is the
Tathagata-garbha, the obscured element as the Buddha-nature, or what we may call the one
life.

[It should be noted, however, that Prasabagika Madhyamikas such as the Gelugpas rather
interpret the Tathagata-garbha as emptiness, specifically the emptiness of the mind. E.
Obermiller more or less followed this interpretation in his 1931 pioneering translation of
the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga or Uttara-tantra, since he followed Gelugpa commentaries, even
though he considered that it taught monism. Similarly, David Ruegg in his 1969 monumental
study of the Tathagata-garbha, La Theorie du Tathagatagarbha et du Gotra, also followed
this interpretation. A review article by Lambert Schmithausen, "Zu D. Seyfort Ruegg's
buch 'La theorie du tathagatagarbha et du gotra'," in f304 Wiener Zeitschrift fur die
Kunde Sudasiens und Archiv fur Indische Philosophie, 1973, criticizes this interpretation.
As summed up by Paul Williams: "Schmithausen has argued that reference to the
tathagatagarbha as emptiness must be understood in terms of the particular meaning of
emptiness for this tradition  that emptiness is a particular aspect of the
tathagatagarbha, i.e., that the tathagatagarbha is empty of defilements, not that it is
identical with the [Prasabagika] Madhyamaka emptiness. I agree." (Mahayana Buddhism:
The Doctrinal Foundations, 1989, p. 281, note 11.)]

Neither of these terms is the concern of the other four treatises of Maitreya. In fact,
the authorship of the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga is not even attributed to Maitreya in the older
Chinese tradition, though it has always been attributed to Maitreya in the Tibetan
tradition. Blavatsky in a letter to A. P. Sinnett specifically links The Secret Doctrine
she was then writing to a secret book of Maitreya:

I have finished an enormous Introductory Chapter, or Preamble, Prologue, call it what
you will; just to show the reader that the text as it goes, every Section beginning with a
page of translation from the Book of Dzyan and the Secret Book of "Maytreya
Buddha" Champai chhos Nga (in prose, not the five books in verse known, which are a
blind) are no fiction.

[The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, p. 195.]

Given their doctrinal similarity, it is likely that the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga, or more
specifically its secret original, is the book of Maitreya that Blavatsky refers to here.
The known Ratna-gotra-vibhaga, though it may be a "blind," still apparently
represents the same doctrinal standpoint as that of The Secret Doctrine . The other four
books of the "i Champai chhos Nga " (byams-pa'i chos lnga), the five (lnga)
religious books (chos, Sanskrit dharma) of Maitreya (byams-pa, pronounced Champa or
Jampa),

[The other four books are: Mahayana-sutralabakara; Madhyanta-vibhaga;
Dharma-dharmata-vibhaga; Abhisamayalabakara . Note the unfortunate blunder of Geoffrey
Barborka in translating Champai chhos Nga as "the whole doctrine in its
essentiality," copied in Boris de Zirkoff's "Historical Introduction" to
the definitive 1978 edition of The Secret Doctrine, p. [69], n. 130. I have more than once
contacted the publishers concerning this, but it could not be corrected.]

however, according to the Great Madhyamikas also represent the same doctrinal
standpoint as that of the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga . The Ratna-gotra-vibhaga forms the heart of
the Great Madhyamaka tradition, which significantly was represented by Dolpopa to be the
"Golden Age Tradition." Although this tradition teaches an inconceivable
absolute shunyata or Shentong (gzan ston) which is not empty of svabhava, its teachings
are not presented in terms of svabhava, so it is not a Svabhavika tradition.

The only references I am aware of to a Svabhavika school in any Buddhist text are those
found in the Buddha-carita, and these do not refer to a Buddhist school of this name, but
rather to a non-Buddhist school.

[Ashvaghosa's Buddha-carita 9.58-62. See also 18.29-40 for a refutation of the svabhava
doctrine.]

The Samaya-bhedoparacana-cakra by Vasumitra, said to have been written only four
centuries after the time of the Buddha, gives an account of the eighteen schools of early
Buddhism, none of which is the Svabhavika. Thus, leaving aside the now largely discredited
account of the Svabhavika school of Buddhism given by a Nepalese Buddhist pandit to Brian
Hodgson, I am aware of no traditional sources for any Buddhist school either calling
themselves Svabhavikas or being called Svabhavikas by other Buddhist schools.

The southern or Hinayana schools in general accepted a svabhava in their impermanent
but real dharmas. In this sense they could be called Svabhavikas, but apparently they were
not. Since this svabhava is impermanent, it cannot be the eternal svabhava referred to in
Theosophical writings. We have noted above an exception to this in the Sarvastivada
school, which taught an eternal svabhava. But its doctrinal standpoint on this is not
clearly known; and this svabhava was apparently still the svabhava of the individual
dharmas rather than the svabhava of the one dhatu. Thus it cannot be the unitary svabhava
referred to in Theosophical writings. Again, the Sarvastivadins were not considered either
by themselves or by others to be Svabhavikas.

The northern or Mahayana schools in general would be the opposite of Svabhavikas,
teaching that all dharmas are empty of svabhava (nihsvabhava). Just as dharmas are
ultimately non-existent, so their svabhava is ultimately non-existent. As put by
Chandrakirti, svabhava is not something (akimcit), it is merely non-existence
(abhava-matra).

[Prasanna-pada commentary on Mula-madhyamaka-karika 15.2.]

The inherent nature or svabhava of fire, for example, is here not its common everyday
nature of burning, but rather is that its essence is non-existent. In other words, the
inherent nature (svabhava) of dharmas is that they have no inherent nature (nihsvabhava).
This position is most fully developed in the Prasabagika Madhyamaka school, the dominant
school in Tibet, generally considered to be the culmination of the Mahayana schools.

The Yogacara school of Mahayana is known for its teaching of the three svabhavas,
derived from the Sandhi-nirmocana-sutra . These svabhavas or natures, which are also
called laksanas or defining characteristics, are applied to the dharmas: a dharma has an
illusory nature, a dependent nature, and a perfect nature established in reality. However,
these are balanced in the same texts with the teaching of the three nihsvabhavas,
culminating with the absolute lack of svabhava (paramartha-nihsvabhavata). So this
certainly would not be considered a Svabhavika position.

The Great Madhyamaka tradition accepts a truly existent though inconceivable absolute
shunyata which is not empty of svabhava. Since this tradition presents its teachings in
terms of shunyata and not in terms of svabhava, as noted above, they are not Svabhavikas.
Yet it is only here that we find a match with the doctrine of svabhava or svabhavata found
in Theosophy. The match is to their teaching of the dhatu, the element, which is described
in terms of absolute shunyata or Shentong empty of anything other than itself, and whose
svabhava is also absolute and truly existent. This, however, is the very teaching most
pointedly refuted by the Gelugpas, who in other regards are considered closest to
Theosophy. But Theosophists and others often remain unaware that the Gelugpas refute this
teaching, because as stated by Hookham:

Unfortunately for those who intuit a Shentong meaning somewhere behind the Buddha's
words, it is possible to listen to Gelugpa teachings for a long time before realizing that
it is precisely this intuition that is being denied. The definitions and the
"difficult points" of the Gelugpa school are designed specifically to exclude a
Shentong view; they take a long time to master.

[The Buddha Within, p. 17.]

Research in Buddhist texts is in its early stages in the West. The Great Madhyamaka
tradition remained largely unknown here until quite recently, and only now are its texts
starting to come out. Much remains to be done in preparation for the coming out of an
original language text of the Book of Dzyan.